His house an hour away showed more polaroids than even the ‘favorites’ from his jacket.
It was completely disgusting and it filled me with a special kind of rage that made me want to go and break something or blow something up.
How could people act like this about someone they didn’t even know?
This guy had been following her around foryearseven when she was just a kid.
I wanted them to lock him up and throw away the key, but unfortunately that wasn’t how things worked.
Not only that, all of the events of the afternoon had happened under the harsh scrutiny of over ten thousand people and the news cameras who had gotten their drama for the day.
Instead of the headlines reading ‘STALKER OF PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER APPREHENDED,’ they read: ‘THE BEAUTY AND THE BODYGUARDS, JUST WHO ARE THE SECRET SERVICE AGENTS OF LENNON HOLLOWAY?’
Then they’d proceeded to dig up each and every photo they had of us with Lennon, from Dallas helping her backstage in Arizona when she had heatstroke, to us innocuously standing behind her at events.
Our names and histories were currently being scrutinized by the news and the internet at large.
My niece had even sent me a TikTok edit earlier that had made me shudder when the words ‘bodyguard thirst trap’ popped up.
This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid and I had been the one to do it because I’d picked Lennon up and cradled her like an alpha would an omega.
And the shittiest part was that I didn’t regret it one bit.
Even if I had spent the past hour being reamed out by Collier on the phone for ignoring his earlier warnings.
Lennon had needed comfort and protection in that moment and my instincts had been screaming that I was the one who needed to provide it for her.
That bastard with the polaroids in his pockets was just one of many on that damned watchlist and just the thought of any one of them touching her made me want to shred my own skin off.
Someone knocked on my hotel room door, stopping the ferocious pacing that I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing.
I was technically off-duty for the night as we had the entire floor of the hotel to ourselves… but I’d never had a good work life balance before so I figured why start now.
Opening the door, I fully expected to see Zeke or one of the other agents on the other side, ready to talk about the freak with the polaroids or the events in New York in the morning, but instead there stood Lennon in a nightgown that nearly made my eyes bulge out of my head.
It clung to every soft curve she possessed before falling around the tops of her thighs like champagne colored water.
Where she had even procured such a thing when she’d spent most of the tour dressing in pajama pants and a t-shirt I wasn’t sure.
“Lennon,” I said, my voice coming out in a low growl that made her shoulders shiver.
She gave me a little wave, her hands wringing the long braid that fell over one shoulder, showing me just how nervous she was.
“What are you doing here?”
I could connect the dots. I wasn’t a stupid man, despite some of my choices over the past few weeks.
But I wanted to hear her say it.
“You know why I’m here, Maverick,” she whispered, her whole body seeming to flush from her cheeks, to the tops of her pale shoulders. “Can I come in?”
This was a monumentally bad idea. There were so many things that could and would go wrong if I let her into my room tonight.
We were already skating on thin ice with Collier and I was pretty sure that her mother was about two seconds away from throwing us inside of some kind of scary ass prison and throwing away the key…
AndyetI still slid my arm up the doorframe, creating enough space for her to walk underneath.
Lennon’s lashes fluttered as she looked up at me.
